That concrete clubhouse, complete with a rotating turret that looks like a medieval fortress, still stands today. It is the spiritual heart of the amateur astronomy world. Today, the Stellafane Convention (held each August) is the oldest continuously running star party in the world. But don’t expect the sterile, silent atmosphere of a professional observatory.
So, he did what any tinkerer would do: He built his own. stellafane vt
On a remote, windswept hilltop in the Green Mountains of Vermont, just outside the tiny village of Springfield, a strange ritual takes place every summer. As the sun dips below the treeline, hundreds of homemade telescopes turn skyward. There are no massive government grants here, no billion-dollar mirrors. Just passion, ingenuity, and the Milky Way spilling across a pitch-black sky. That concrete clubhouse, complete with a rotating turret
This is —Latin for "Shrine to the Stars"—and for nearly a century, it has been the Vatican of amateur telescope making. The Birthplace of a Hobby To understand Stellafane, you have to go back to the 1920s. A young man named Russell W. Porter—an Arctic explorer, artist, and eccentric genius—settled in Springfield. Porter was obsessed with the stars, but he was frustrated. Telescopes were too expensive for the average person. But don’t expect the sterile, silent atmosphere of
Because everyone here built their own scope, they know every flaw and virtue of their optics. They will gladly let you look through a 24-inch hand-ground Dobsonian for a view of the Ring Nebula that looks like a photograph.